Sports and belief systems

You might recall the basis for the name of this blog. Imagine the scene as a befuddled outsider (a yankee, probably) observes how southerners lose their minds over college football and comments on the passions being (for good or ill, quite possibly) like religion, only to have a native respond (a grizzled veteran, preferably) with something along the lines of "son, down here football ain't a religion, it's way more important than that."

Leaving aside the evident truth of the statement (more often than I as a pastor like to think about), and a previous and somewhat jocular blog entry to the contrary, I wouldn't necessarily argue that football, or any other sport for that matter, is a religion. I would easily and quickly argue, though, that sports share many things with religion. Possibly one of the chief similarities is that partisanship to most sports, or to individual teams in particular, seems to involve something like a belief system.

I'm thinking of more than the obvious "my team > your team" sentiment expressed with varying degrees of passion and/or vulgarity by fans, or sometimes with humor as by the t-shirt below, or in the song from Weird Al Yankovic's most recent album (your tolerance for which may be determined by your tolerance for an s-word that rhymes with "ducks").

Nota bene: I do acknowledge that there are plenty of fans who in fact know that such a claim is absolutely untrue for their team, and that in fact theirs is the team Weird Al is making fun of. They're the ones who are absoluely floored by a 6-6 season and a trip to the Independence Bowl, or not actually being mathematically eliminated from the playoffs before Labor Day. Those teams are not that common, and their fans tend to be looked down on by fans whose belief system is governed by one of the few close-to-universal claims, "if you're not a winner, you're a loser." But they do exist, and they are perhaps less verging on literal insanity than most.

No, I'm suggesting that there are somewhat more subtle, and usually unconscious, attitudes or assumptions or beliefs that underlie the fanship of an awful lot of sports followers.

I have no intention of trying to claim these beliefs as universal across sports, aside from the above winner/loser dictum. I'd say that many of the beliefs are particular to their sports, possibly to individual teams or the cities in which they play, and in a few cases to the league (or conference, in college) in which a fan's team plays. So instead I'll point out a few specific cases as best as possible.

Since I'm watching a baseball playoff game right now, its particular character as a very organized belief system jumps out at me, with the particular distinguishing characteristic that much of the game's belief system seems to originate with not fans or coaches, but the players themselves. This claim derives mostly from the particular canon of law, practically Talmudic in its scope, usually known as The Right Way to Play the Game (or in some cases The Unwritten Rules). 

This usually ends up being boiled down to "don't show me up." Anything that the offended party takes as embarrassing to the offended party comes under the ban here -- watching your home run ball leave the yard, flipping your bat after hitting it, any kind of gesture by a pitcher after striking out a hitter, a particularly showboat-ish catch in the outfield, you name it and it can be considered offensive by somebody, and you get condemned as not knowing The Right Way to Play the Game. And then somebody throws at your head, which is somehow construed as The Right Way to Play the Game.

Baseball also seems more prone to particular beliefs about curses than other sports. The lodestar example of this curse obsession is in this postseason, currently tied with the Los Angeles Dodgers in the National League Championship Series. The Chicago Cubs haven't won a World Series since 1908, and rather than chalking it up to having a lot of bad teams and then having good teams not play well when they did get to the playoffs, a curse about a billy goat became the (ha!) scapegoat. Varying events such as a collapse in the NLCS agains the San Diego Padres in 1984 and the so-called "Bartman game" in 2003 (seriously, people, Bartman didn't choke away eight freaking runs to the Florida Marlins -- who, bitterly to Cubs fans, went on to win the World Series that season), are of course blamed on the Curse of the Billy Goat. I'm guessing that lots of Cubs fans are invoking that curse after being beaten last night by Clayton Kershaw, who is only one of the best pitchers in baseball.

Meanwhile, tonight there are probably Cleveland fans who are wondering about the Curse of Rocky Colavito after tonight's starting pitcher, Trevor Bauer, lasted only 2/3 of an inning after suffering a cut on a finger a few days ago. Since Mike Napoli just hit a home run to give his team the lead against the Toronto Blue Jays, perhaps they're calming down for a moment.

You can read about a whole bunch of other sports-related "curses" here. Other sports do get invoked, and in some cases cities are somehow regarded as being "cursed" across all sports teams.With the Cleveland Cavaliers' NBA championship, the supposed "Cleveland curse" would seem to be gone, with Buffalo and/or San Diego (which has never experienced a major-sport championship for any of its teams) most likely to be regarded as "cursed" even if no specific cause of a curse can be noted.

Most such sports beliefs aren't that elaborate or overtly stated, though. So much of the "belief system" around a sport or team is much more likely to go unspoken, and perhaps to claim much more power for its unspokenness. 

Sometimes that belief is tied up with beliefs outside of sports, such as nationalism. Here football is most prominent, though baseball certainly tries with its "national pastime" nickname. Football has certianly wrapped itself in the flag, both on the pro and college levels, and particularly since 9/11. It has also shown a propensity for direct military display, sometimes funded by the Department of Defense (although NASCAR and MLB also score heavily there).

But perhaps the most insidious unspoken belief in sports, and likely the most unspoken and most powerful, is simple but sinister, and one shared with nationalism at its most base.

My team, right or wrong.

It may have adaptations; my conference, right or wrong (fans of the Southeastern Conference, particularly in football, are Exhibit A here); my league, right or wrong; maybe my sport, right or wrong?

It's the impulse that turns Baylor University and its fans into particularly horrid victim-blamers in the face of accusations of sexual assault against its football players (and Baylor is hardly the only example here, though probably the most egregious of late). My school, right or wrong.

It's the impulse that (along with gobs of cash) makes FIFA one of the most corrupt organizations on earth. My sport, right or wrong. 

It's what allows Atlanta or Cleveland baseball fans, or fans of a whole heap of college teams (Florida State, for example), or Chicago hockey fans, to ignore the inherent insult in making mascots out of fellow human beings (even those who have enough ethical understanding to know better). My team, my school, right or wrong.

And (you knew I was going here) it makes football fans, teams, collegiate conferences, and the NFL unwilling to face just what playing the game has most likely been doing to players for more than a century, even if we only noticed it when Mike Webster died.

And this is why it will be virtually impossible to "fix" football. 

Because my game, right or wrong. 

It has to be the players' fault. Something must be wrong with them. Or the coaches are doing it wrong. Or the helmets are wrong, or the artificial turf is wrong, or anything other than the basic and hard-to-escape observation that when very large and very strong men run into each other at very high speeds and over and over and over and over and over again, the miracle is that such brain trauma doesn't happen to more players. 

It can't be that. My game, right or wrong. 

And thus the game will go on, and people will keep on getting damaged beyond repair, and nobody in the stands will be able to tell. 

And, I guess, nobody will care.

The giving and receiving of hits

Two highly prominent athletes in their respective sports are currently sidelined due to suffering concussions in competition. (That would actually be three if you count Dale Earnhardt, Jr., who is trying to rehabilitate while missing the end of the NASCAR season due to concussion effects from much earlier this year.) One of last year's Super Bowl quarterbacks, Cam Newton of the Carolina Panthers, missed the team's most recent game due to a concussion. For Newton, the season started on a rugged note when he received multiple hits to the head in the season opener against their Super Bowl opponents, the Denver Broncos, and the pattern has continued through the season so far. While the initial reaction after game one was mostly about the dubious hits he has received, of late the conversation has turned to suggestions that Newton will have to change his style of play, relying more on pocket play and getting rid of the ball quickly instead of keeping plays alive with his feet. While this smacks a bit of "blaming the victim," it also seems pretty lame; the notion that any of this will guarantee that further harm does not find Newton is pretty untenable given that concussions don't happen just to running quarterbacks (ask Case Keenum).

Meantime, in the National Hockey League, possibly its best player is sidelined again. Sidney Crosby, center for the Pittsburgh Penguins, is day-to-day (such a thoroughly existential phrase) after a collision in practice on Friday. Any such concern for Crosby is magnified by his previous experience. Crosby missed nearly two seasons after suffering a concussion in 2011 (though he was hardly the first NHL player to have significant time lost due to concussion), leaving his sport missing one of its brightest lights and amplifying the concern about concussions in hockey during a time when a number of its former players were being revealed to have suffered from chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE). The end of that period also marked the start of legal action against the NHL over head trauma. It may be coincidental that the NHL just announced new policies adding "spotters" at matches -- certified athletic trainers with hockey experience -- who can call for players to be removed from the game when a concussion is suspected.

In the current climate around both sports, such losses draw heightened attention from fans of these sports, or even sports fans generally. This is, of course, a far cry from past years in which the word "concussion" might not have entered the discussion at all, and neither Newton nor Crosbly would have missed any action until neither one of them was able to walk. That only began to change after a number of deaths, mostly of football players at first, who were found to have suffered from CTE. This is of course well-established now, but I find it worthwhile and even needful to reach back in memory and try to remember how it was when we didn't know or understand what was going on, and to try to figure out how I came to the position I currentled y occupy, one in which watching football at all just isn't something I can stomach anymore.

In doing so, I find that the turn started many years ago, with the death of Andre Waters.


Andre Waters played twelve seasons in the NFL, mostly with the Philadelphia Eagles. His reputation, and it was a pervasive one, was as one of the hardest hitters in the league among its defensive backs, or frankly from any position. On occasion Waters would draw fines for the severity of his hits, and that in an age when the league was cranking out videos like "NFL's Greatest Hits" and other such similarly themed titles.

After his playing career ended Waters began to get into collegiate coaching, working at Morgan State University, the University of South Florida, and Alabama State University before ending up at Fort Valley State College, an HBCU in central Georgia not far from my hometown. Between that and the fact that Waters was a native of Belle Glade, Florida (not far from West Palm Beach, where I was living in 2006), the story caught my attention. It's not as though Waters was a favorite player, by any means -- he was usually causing harm to whatever team I was following. But his was a familiar name, and the report of suicide was naturally shocking.

And he wasn't a Pittsburgh Steeler.

Mike Webster had died in 2002. He had been diagnosed with brain damage during his life, but his diagnosis of CTE was not of course known until after his death. Another former Steeler, Justin Strzelczyk, died in an automotive accident in 2004, and the following year onetime teammate Terry Long committed suicide by drinking antifreeze. Both were also found to have CTE in postmortem examination.

As bizarre as it sounds, one could at that point rationalize such stories by wondering damn, what are the Steelers doing to their players? After all, the three had all played for them. Maybe they were just too abusive in practice or something. Also, all three of these players had been offensive linemen. They were in position to get hit a lot, and on every play. If you don't want to think there's a real problem, you look for anything that can be used to limit the scope of that problem. So no, it wasn't crazy-sounding to posit that the Steelers somehow abused their offensive linemen in some way.

Andre Waters's death and diagnosis messed with that.

For one thing, obviously Waters didn't play for the Steelers. He spent the last couple of years of his career with the Arizona Cardinals after his time with the Eagles.

Also, Waters wasn't an offensive lineman. He was a defensive back.

He wasn't the one being hit. He was the hitter.

He was famous for delivering punishing hits. One might even say he was notorious, though such terms are usually reserved for the likes of Jack Tatum (the one who paralyzed Daryl Stingley) or Lester Hayes. To learn that Waters had suffered from this condition messed with a lot of the mythology about football, perhaps the most pervasive of such being a gratuitous perversion of a well-known scripture: when it comes to hits in football, it is better to get than to receive.

If a ferocious hitter like Andre Waters could end up dead at age 44, with a brain likened to that of an 85-year-old Alzheimer's sufferer, clearly hitting was not a lot better than being hit.

I would actually go so far as to say that the death of Andre Waters was the first one to cause me to pay attention to football and CTE and the deaths of players -- not in any systematic way, and not nearly to the point of even thinking about giving up watching football (though I had lost a lot of interest in the NFL by this time), but enough to wonder about what effect the game might have on some number of its players.

At that point it was hard to imagine the numbers of former players who would be found to have suffered from CTE, or that such big names as Junior Seau or Ken Stabler would be among their number. It was certainly not imaginable that a movie would be made on the subject or that a book like League of Denial would come along.

In short, it was not imaginable that we'd end up where we are now, where football -- not just the NFL but football at every age -- would have to think about change, would have to face the possibility that people might decide it wasn't worth the risk for their kids. It was hard to imagine that players who never played beyond college would be diagnosed with this condition.

And yet here we are.

When there was crying in baseball...

...or, how a MLB team taught the world (and the church?) a lesson in grieving...

Tom Hanks has never been more wrong.

More precisely, Jimmy Dugan -- the character Hanks played in A League of Their Own -- has never been more wrong than the past two days, particularly in Miami.

Since the bitterly shocking news of the death of José Fernández in a boating accident near South Beach early Sunday morning, his team, the Miami Marlins, has become an unwitting portrait in collective grief. And surprisingly, for a team that hasn't always had a good reputation for its ownership or management, the franchise has (so far) been up to the task.

Fernández was not the only athlete to die on Sunday; in fact he was far from the most famous, with Arnold Palmer's passing later on Sunday. For all the surprise at his death (Jack Nicklaus reported Palmer sounding "great" in a phone conversation just a few days before Palmer's death), the world knows how to cope with the passing of a legend, more or less. (And earlier deaths in the sports world this year -- Muhammad Ali and Pat Summit in particular -- came with a back story of long-standing disease that almost made their deaths equal part sadness and relief.) The encomiums for Palmer's spectacular achievements and particular stature in his sport and the larger culture came about as easily as anything in a time of grief.

Or, to put it another way, the New York Times probably had a draft of Palmer's obituary ready for finishing at the time of his death. It's pretty unlikely that was the case for the 24-year-old Fernández.

It's not as if baseball hasn't had its share of dying-too-young (and the death of any active player falls into that category). Only two years ago the St. Louis Cardinals were jolted by the death of outfielder Oscar Taveras, a player even younger than Fernández, shortly after their elimination from the playoffs. Seven years ago Nick Adenhart, a pitcher for the Angels who had made all of four major-league appearances, was killed in a car accident in early April. I could go on quite a while but it's probably easier to refer you to this list, of baseball players who died while still playing ball (and as is the way of Wikipedia, Fernández is already on the list).

Each such case is unique, and Fernández's is not an exception. Many media outlets have made reference to the deaths of Roberto Clemente and Thurman Munson, which speaks highly of Fernández's stature in the game, but Clemente and Munson were established veterans or even in the later stages of their career. Fernández was only 24, completing his fourth season in MLB (two of which were shortened by injury). A Rookie of the Year season in 2013 and an award-worthy season this year, along with an effusive and typically joyful personality, elevated Fernández and the impact of his passing beyond those of many of the players noted earlier.

Ken Hubbs, a young second baseman for the Chicago Cubs who had been named Rookie of the Year in 1962, died in a plane crash before the 1964 season. His story offers both similarities and differences; he had known success early in his career, but not on the level of Fernández. Further, Hubbs was a completely different personality, quiet and restrained. Fernández was a one-man celebration of baseball, with a dramatic backstory of escape from Cuba to boot.

In short, the Marlins were confronted with a particular and unique case; a dynamic young player, a huge part of not only their present but especially their future, and a charismatic personality in the clubhouse and even a kind of hero in a city that really had never seen such a player on their MLB team, dead in a horrible accident, at the climax of their season, while the team was technically if not practically still in the hunt for a playoff berth, with achievement that already suggested a potential Hall of Fame career ahead.

Sunday's game, not surprisingly, was cancelled. If the Marlins were only on the fringe of playoff contention, that day's opponent, the Atlanta Braves, was thoroughly eliminated. However, the New York Mets came to town on Monday, and they were (and are) still in the heat of the wild-card race. A game had to be played by then.

On Sunday, the team gathered for a press conference at what would have been game time. The team's president, director of baseball operations, and manager were joined by third baseman Martín Prado in speaking for the team. In the realm of sports being tough is paramount, but not a one of these representatives veered anywhere near that posture. Their grief was real and unabashed. Tears flowed. President of Baseball Operations Michael Hill broke down and was unable to continue.

Jimmy Dugan would have lost his mind, I'm sure. And if Sunday hadn't driven him crazy, Monday would certainly have done so.

The game was played, with less of the usual boisterous atmosphere of a major-league sporting event. It was part ballgame, part catharsis, part memorial service, part wake. Markers throughout the park reminded of Fernández, including his number (16) painted onto the back of the pitcher's mound and every player in the Marlins' lineup wearing Fernández's name and number. Dee Gordon, the team's slap-hitting second baseman, came to the plate with his own tribute; a natural lefty, he took his first pitch from the right-hand batter's box, wearing a helmet with Fernández's name on it. After that pitch, Gordon took his usual place in the left-hand batter's box ... and drove a long home run to right field. You have never seen so many tears after a home run.

Both team president David Samson and manager Don Mattingly even acknowledged something that had gone unspoken until then, and allowed that it was on their minds. Fernández had originally been scheduled to pitch on Sunday, but the team decided to bring back injured starter Adam Conley for his first start after rehab on Sunday against the weaker Braves and reserve Fernández for Monday night against the stronger Mets. If Fernández had been scheduled to start Sunday, would he have taken that boat trip late Saturday night? Both Samson and Mattingly were frank about their own wonderings about that very fact.

Perhaps the most striking aspect of the two days has been a slight insight into the counseling being received by players and staff. One key statement, paraphrased here: if you're in shock, be in shock. If you're in denial, be in denial. If you need to cry, cry. Don't hide. Don't mask. Don't pretend to be something you're not.

That, from a pastor's point of view, is spectacular.

And yet it's very often the opposite message that is sent in time of grief.

And sometimes the church is the worst messenger in the time of grief.

Have you ever heard any of the following?

This happened for a reason.

You have to be strong.

All things work together for good ... (a poor translation of the Apostle Paul).

They needed another angel in heaven/singer in the heavenly choir (just horrible theology).

Buck up, sissy.

You have to be an example for your family/friends/church/teammates (in this case).

I'm guessing you have. And if you're like me you cringed. Or worse.

The Marlins' season ends Sunday. That might begin the hardest part of this grieving process. They no longer will have each other to lean on.

But so far, credit the team with both being up front with their grief and still doing their jobs. After all, they beat the Mets on Monday night, 7-3.

After the game, the Marlins gathered again at the mound, and left their caps there -- one last final tribute for the evening.

Weekly Reader: Well, what do you expect?

So on Sunday afternoon, before heading off for a couple of meetings, I was busy watching football (or futbol, to be more precise) when my Twitter feed apparently felt compelled to alert me that a football (American style) player had gotten hurt.

In this case New Orleans Saints defensive back P.J. Williams had to be carted off the field after sustaining not one, but two hits to the head on one play. Due to the uncertainty about Williams's injuries and their extent he was immobilized on a backboard and his head/helmet was strapped down to prevent any further injury. In the end, though, the diagnosis was a concussion, and while Williams stayed overnight at a hospital for precautionary reasons, he was expected to be discharged on Monday and enter the NFL's concussion protocol.

Quite a Sunday for your second-ever game in the NFL. He was even a hashtag for a little while.

Now time for this blog to get callous.

There are injuries by which you are allowed to be shocked. When Kevin Ware's leg snapped like a cheap pencil in the NCAA Final Four, shock was appropriate. It was horrifying, grotesque, and completely not typical for a basketball game.

Then there are injuries you really have no business being shocked by.

You really have no business being shocked when your favorite baseball team's best pitcher goes down with a torn rotator cuff. It's pretty much an epidemic, and while it generally isn't life-threatening, it still happens way more than it should.

It's a bit silly to be shocked when a hockey player loses a tooth. It's a stereotype, for pete's sake.

On the more farcical end of things, there's no point in being shocked when a soccer player acts as if he's in the throes of mortal agony after a non-contact play (I say "he" here because this really doesn't seem to happen so often in the women's game).

And football? I'm not sure there's any kind of injury on a football field that should really be shocking anymore. We've seen too many. And frankly, at this point it might be that those who suffer obvious injuries that require them to be removed from the game are fortunate, in that they don't stick around for two or three or a dozen more hits to their stunned cranial matter.

This is what the sport does to its players. And you know that going in, if you're a rational adult.

So spare me the hashtags. You've made the bargain; live with it.


Other things to read and think about:

*If you wondered why the NFL had become such a prolific contributor to select members of Congress, now you know why.

*From the "Waiting on Science Our Savior" department: The NFL is gonna throw gobs of cash at the pursuit of a "magic helmet," and some for concussion research too.

*Former NFL placekicker Cary Blanchard died earlier this month. He was one of the 4,500 former players who was a plaintiff in that settlement reached a couple of years ago. Yes, placekicker. Even I didn't think that was terribly possible. Shows what I know.

*From earlier this year: you might remember an experiemental study from a few years ago, when a number of former players like Tony Dorsett were judged to show signs of CTE while still alive? The first former player to be a part of that study, Fred McNeill, has died, and...he has been posthumously confirmed to have had CTE. This could be a very big deal in the effort to diagnose the disease in the living and try to find some way to combat it. The bad part, of course, is that more players will have to die to confirm this -- the great ethical conundrum of CTE research.

*A former NFL great suffering from possibly football-related dementia has become the subject of an ugly custody battle.  He's regrettably unlikely to be the last such story.

Outside concussionball:

*A group of NHL players hit Capitol Hill (figuratively) to lobby for tigher rules for younger players.

*Political activism among athletes is not limited to NFL players during national anthems.

Scary, but not shocking.

What we may never know

One of the largely unspoken dimensions of our understanding of chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) in football players is that while we have a certain amount of understanding generated by currently diagnosed cases, we'll never truly know the whole story.

We will know when former players or their families choose to have their brains given for examination after their deaths. Given the ever-increasing awareness of the effects of football and the thousands of hits its players sustain over the course of their participation on the youth, high school, college and pro ball (for those who get that far), that number is fairly likely to increase. Even that won't necessarily be a complete picture, since most of those who choose to donate are those who experienced symptoms of brain decline during their lifetimes.

(Side note: you could possibly do science a great favor, as a former player, by submitting your brain for study especially if you do not experience such symptoms in your lifetime. Understanding why some are afflicted by CTE and some are not would be an important advance in understanding this trauma.)

However, even that picture won't necessarily reflect the whole story.

That Mike Webster's condition became known to the public has as much to do with the fluke of what Pittsburgh medical examiner was called in to examine the body when it arrived at the morgue. There's not any guarantee that a different examiner would have chosen to perform the more extensive examination that Dr. Bennet Omalu did on that occasion. If that had not been the case, who knows if anyone would have chosen to probe further into the deaths of Justin Strzelzczyk or Terry Long.

Before that awareness in the medical community, we will never know how many former players wer afflicted by the condition in the 1950s, '60s, '70s, or '80s, or even earlier. They might have gone down as simple cases of dementia, or something other like Alzheimer's, or simply unexplained illnesses.

Or unexplained suicides.

In researching on this subject, I came across the story of Jim Duncan. Duncan played briefly in the NFL in the late 1960s and early 1970s, with its pinnacle in the 1970 Super Bowl season of the Baltimore Colts, for whom he started as a defensive back in that championship game. He also featured as a kick returner that season.

The next year he began the season with the Colts as a starter. Injuries derailed his season, though, culminating in a head injury that November. Though no concussion was diagnosed, his season ws more or less off the rails at that point.

Perhaps more interestingly, both team and family members noticed changes in Duncan after the injury; team officials spoke of changes in his personality, while his mother recalled that Duncan began to experience memory loss.

Duncan's life went downhill quickly from there. He was traded the next season to the New Orleans Saints, but was waived by them, and after a failed tryout with the Miami Dolphins (then coached by his former Colts coach Don Shula), he was out of football. A side business went south, treatment for mental illness was required, and his marriage came apart. Finally, in October 1972, according to an official police report, Duncan committed suicide by entering a courthouse, grabbing a police officer's gun, and shooting himself.

The questionable circumstances of his death carry unpleasant resonances with modern headlines about young black men and shootings at the hands of police officers. The other circumstances of his last two years, though, sound awfully familiar to those who have followed the story of CTE:

Football? Check.

Head injury (whether diagnosed as concussion or not)? Check.

Memory loss? Check.

Personality changes? Check.

Business troubles? Check.

Insinuations of drug use/abuse? Check.

Suicide (possibly)? Check.

There will never be any way, at this point, to conclude or demonstrate that Jim Duncan suffered from CTE. His relatively young age, only 26, would not be a disqualifying factor, as the likes of Michael Keck and Tyler Sash demonstrate. But Duncan died forty-four years ago. Analysis or study isn't going to be possible. And there are enough questions about the circumstances of Duncan's death that should not be dismissed that CTE cannot be assumed. But it doesn't seem as though it can be ruled out either.

But we will never know.

And it's very hard to believe he's the only such case.

(Side note: normally I'd have put in a whole bumch of links on Jim Duncan, but most of them are in Google News and Google Books which don't always link well. Google "Jim Duncan suicide" to see reports in The Afro American, Jet, and other sources that discuss aspects of Duncan's life and death.)

Jim Duncan returning a kick in the AFC Championship game of the 1970 season (played Jan. 3, 1971), at the height of his brief career.

Rant: What is a problem, and what is not

One of the greater but understated challenges in tackling attitudes about the ongoing trouble with football and its brain-trauma tendencies is in tackling attitudes about sports more broadly, attitudes that are even less consciously vocalized but nonetheless powerful and almost impossible to overcome. One of those is the attitude that, somehow, sports is a necessity.

If you pressed a sports fan on the subject they would likely either: (1) deny that such a statement is true, but continue to live their lives as if sports is in fact a necessity, or: (2) say that, yes, sports is a necessity, but be unable to answer "why" with anything beyond vacuous platitudes or myths.

Case in point: this article, a seemingly innocuous piece by one Julianna W. Miner on why kids tend to drop out of youth sports by around age 13.

Now it would be possible to report such a study, commissioned by the National Alliance for Youth Sports, in a pretty blase manner, putting the statistics out there and not much else. But that's not what his afoot here; it's not a straight-up news report, but closer to an opinion piece, written by a mother of youth, one of whom is about to hit that age, fretting about All The Things The Child Will Miss By Not Playing Sports.

Now if you've read this blog much you know something is up when I go all Hunter S. Thompson on you with the capitalization. Let's pull out the sticky lines and expose them to the light:

“It’s not fun anymore” isn’t the problem; it’s a consequence of a number of cultural, economic and systemic issues that result in our kids turning away from organized sports at a time when they could benefit from them the most. Playing sports offers everything from physical activity, experiencing success and bouncing back from failure to taking calculated risks and dealing with the consequences to working as a team and getting away from the ubiquitous presence of screens. Our middle-schoolers need sports now more than ever.

The "it's not fun anymore" quote, first of all, shouldn't be dismissed quite so easily; she doesn't seem to think her children are particularly intelligent, because the natural thing to do would be to ask "well, why isn't it fun anymore?" and get some more specifics out of it. But apparently the author is just bursting with the systemic problems she's just gushing to get out and can't be bothered with details.

The real slippery logic comes thereafter, with the recited list of positive attributes of playing sports. There are two particular kinds of slippery logic at play here; one I'll call the "lone savior" fallacy, and the other the "illusion of flawlessness."

Note the sleight of hand at play above: first, the claim is that kids are turning away from organized sports "at a time when they could benefit from them the most." Then the next sentence begins "Playing sports..." and goes on to recite the usual list of mandatory benefits of sports, as if somehow one absolutely cannot learn how to bounce back from failure if one never plays football or something (oh, and there is the ubiquitous complaint about excessive time in front of computers or phones for good measure).

But where did the word "organized" go?

Have we actually made it impossible for kids to engage in physical activity outside of organized sports? The only way to do so is to sign up for a league?

(Of all the bizarre things, I'm reminded of an episode of The Flintstones. Fred and the other parents are starting to put too much pressure on the kids in the kiddie baseball league. Barney, the only adult with sense in this case, eventually spirits the kids away to an undisclosed location where they can play for fun. I wanna be Barney Rubble.)

The conflation of "play" or "playing games" with "organized sports" is a deeply problematic mindset that is so deeply entrenched in culture as to be inseparable from any discussion about kids and physical activity. There are a boatload of problems with such a conflation, but to pick on just one for now: the moment that "organized" sports becomes the dominant or even exclusive paradigm you end up with an industry of sorts initially intended (I'll be generous here) to support kids and their physical activity, but eventually ending up demanding kids to be fed into the system in order for it to survive..and you get opinion pieces in the Washington Post trying to shame kids into continuing to play (or their parents into forcing them to play). Go look at that NAYS website linked above. It's just desperate to convince you that organized sports is the only way your child will ever be saved (from what I have no idea, but as a pastor/public theologian my BS antennae are naturally sensitive to such things).

Now let's check out the flip side of this assumption; organized sports, it is very much assumed here, is the only hope for producing children who learn such things as persistence in the face of failure, resilience, dealing with consequences, working in concert with others, and even cutting down screen time.

[WARNING: I am about to swear, loudly.]

BULLSHIT.

You want your child to learn resilience, persistence, bouncing back from failure, and all that stuff? Start them in music when young. Start them on one of those ubiquitous recorders when they hit fourth or fifth grade.

Or get them in drama club. Or dance (now there's some major physical activity for ya).

You can't stop and stew over your failure, because there's no break. You got to get your next line spoken. The music or the dance don't stop for you to have a pity party.

And even better, you can do those things literally the rest of your life. You can't play football forever, but there are church choirs out there dying for singers, and community theatre is everywhere.

So yes, I absolutely question the necessity of organized sports for learning all those virtues.

One blog post isn't enough to unpack that question, but the other bit of slippery logic must be addressed. Not surprisingly, the author isn't all that interested in getting into the possible drawbacks or harms attached to organized sports for you.

I, as it happens, have no such reluctance.

Perhaps most obvious these days in injury risks we never imagined before. Even without getting into the usual subject of the blog, and the degree to which even people who don't play football beyond youth-sports level or a little high school can end up with some degree of CTE discernible in their brains upon death, you have to be a blithering idiot not to be very circumspect about starting your child on such a sport. (Fortunately there are other options; in fact, we recently had an Olympics full of games that don't involve brain-rattling.) But there are other horror stories -- teenage pitchers getting Tommy John surgery, ghastly injuries from basketball or hockey or gymnastics (???), all can be found if you look hard enough.

But I want to pick on something else. I question the notion that all the impacts of playing organized sports are positive.

Do you learn independent thought playing youth football? Or do you learn "do what coach says or you're benched"?

Do you learn creativity?

Do you learn social discernment?

Do you ever actually learn that discretion really is the better part of valor? In other words, when quitting really is the right thing to do?

Or do you learn mindless obedience?

Or do you learn that physical prowess trumps all?

Or do you learn that your success is dependent on someone else's failure?

Let us not buy the assumption that all of the lessons of organized sports are good ones. To borrow words from Frederick Buechner,

Maybe it's not competition but cooperation and comradeship that build the only character worth building. If it's by playing games together that we learn to win battles, maybe it's by playing, say, music together that we learn to avoid them.

The original column that precipitated this rant ends with the sentence: "And, perhaps more importantly, until we dismantle the parenting culture that emphasizes achievement and success over happy, healthy kids, we don't stand a chance of solving this problem." Ms. Miner, you haven't earned the status to critique parenting cultures, because you have failed to convince us that kids leaving organized sports is an actual problem. Come back when you're not blowing smoke and throwing shade.

You know, this might just teach your kids teamwork, resilience, etc. too.

Shining a light

Media attention to the ongoing brain-trauma struggle in football has come from various sources. In terms of media presentations, the movie Concussion and the PBS Frontline documentary League of Denial (based on the book of the same name) are probably the most high-profile projects, although others have been produced on the subject. A number of books and articles have also been produced, although these are often more general treatments of the violence and physical toll of football.

A couple of new productions are making their way into the public consciousness this month. A documentary with the heart-tugging title Requiem for a Running Back appeared at the Carter Center in Atlanta a couple of weeks ago (see no. 5); in it the director Rebecca Carpenter chronicles the decline of her father Lew, a former back for the Detroit Lions, Green Bay Packers, and Cleveland Browns and also a coach in the NFL, in his later years. Unbeknownst to Carpenter, in those years her father was likely suffering the effects of chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), which was found in his brain after his death. (The Carter Center screening was arranged in part by an intern at the Center, by the name of Chris Borland; you might remember him...)

Carpenter's reflection on her father's life and decline contains some familiar elements from the stories of others; sudden mood swings, forgetfulness, becoming withdrawn and distant, and more. Lew Carpenter died at a relatively early phase of CTE research, though well after the early names like Mike Webster or Andre Waters. He became the 18th former NFL player to be diagnosed with CTE after his death in 2010 (keep in mind that number is pushing close to 100 now).

Rebecca Carpenter's experience is refreshingly informed by what might be called NFL privilege. As a result of her father's career, she was able to access an education and social status she would never have been able to access otherwise, and that such status allows her the privilege to make sure her son never gets near a football field "unless he's dating a cheerleader." It is a complicated situation, and at times her words carry the weight of survivor's guilt.

A different take on the subject of football airs tonight on something called truTV, a channel I know of only because it carries some early-round games in the NCAA basketball tournament. A comedic/informational show called "Adam Ruins Everything" promises to perform its title act on football in an episode airing tonight at 10:00 p.m.

Adam Conover is a stand-up comedian who developed the original version of the show for the website College Humor. Like the annoying friend who won't let you off the hook for believing those commonplace things that turn out to be untrue, Conniver takes a topic per show and takes down two or three myths associated with that subject. Tonight's subject is football, and Conover will sound the alarm about the health problems and myths associated with sports drinks as a principal means of hydration for young athletes; the degree to which the playoffs are thoroughly unsuited for determining the best player in the league; and ... the degree to which head injuries are far less avoidable than people think, it sounds like. (Oh, and the guy sources his information online.)

I don't know that you'll necessarily learn anything from Conover that you haven't already seen in this blog, but I have no doubt that Conover will have more eyeballs on his show tonight than this blog ever gets. So I won't complain if somebody else is out there banging the drum on how concussions are not the only culprit in football brain trauma.

So you have former players, and their family members, out there trying to make an impact; researchers like Dr. Ann McKee and Dr. Bennet Omalu; occasional journalists like Alan Schwartz of the New York Times; the Fainaru brothers, authors of League of Denial and occasoinal ESPN contributors, and a smattering of other journalists and authors.

From the precincts of the church, you get a few articles in Sojourners; a downloadable study from The Thoughtful Christian, which aims more generally at football than strictly brain trauma (and that seems to be the extent of my denomination's efforts in the area); a little bit of content from the Christian Century; and a few scattered efforts elsewhere. Not much, for a people whose ethic claims (often very loudly and rudely) to be about the preservation of life.

I don't know what will happen to Rebecca Carpenter's documentary; maybe it will get to HBO (although as invested in football as they are, probably not) or some other distribution. And a few people will see "Adam Ruins Everything" tonight as well.

That's something, I guess.

Airing in a little less than an hour...